Natural fats are often fractionated in order to get fractions that have improved properties compared with the unfractionated fats. Examples hereof are fractions of palm oil, shea oil, coconut oil, palm kernel oil and many others. From EP 815 738 blends are known that comprise "an interesterified Shea-olein fraction". However the interesterification conditions are not given and therefore it remains unclear whether this interesterification resulted in randomisation or not. Moreover it remains unclear whether a fraction of an interesterified Sh-olein is applied or whether a fraction of Sh-olein is subjected to interesterification and the product resulting therefrom is used. The blend comprising the product is used for making a whipping cream, respectively a whipped filling fat, although in the text also the use in wrapper margarine is indicated. It is said that by using this fat post-hardening problems of the fat can be reduced. The blends are based on fats with saturated C16 and/or C18 fatty acids in it, such as palm oil or fractions thereof. A disadvantage of the upgrading of a fat by fractionation often is that in addition to the desired fraction with the required product performance also one or more fractions are obtained that are not useful for application in foods. Often these fractions are too liquid, meaning that they have too low solid fat contents if measured by an NMR pulse technique to be able to apply them successfully in foods. These fractions then have to be discarded or have to be used for less useful applications like caddle feed. It would therefore be very beneficial if for such fractions a suitable application could be found, either for the fat as such or after being converted into another fat composition. We therefore studied whether we could find ways to upgrade such (waste) oils. There are actually two different routes of improvement possible:
Route 1 consists of a hardening process which will result in a high trans fatty acid content of the improved product. Route 2 which is part of the invention consists of a randomization process which results in a product having no increase in trans fatty acids. This study resulted in the finding of novel fat compositions with beneficial properties that can be applied in many food compositions. Those novel fats were found to have higher solid fat contents than the fats they were made from. Therefore these novel fats can be used to structure eg liquid oils often used in food compositions like margarines (puff pastry or cream) or icings, while they are also very useful as frying oil either as pure fat or as a blend with one or more other fats or oils.
An example of an attempt to reuse a liquid oil is disclosed in EP 69599. According to this patent a CBE is made from shea oil by fractionation. The olein fraction formed as side product is up-graded by subjecting it to a directed 1,3 enzymic interesterification. By this process the fatty acid groups bonded to the 1,3 positions of the triglycerides are redistributed and some more of the SOS compound is formed. This is isolated by fractionation. Still an olein fraction is obtained as side product for which no use exists.